


There are limited ways in which I can tell you "always"

by callmecathy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (over?)protective John, Coda to God Mode, Established Relationship, M/M, Melancholy (and more melancholy), Mild Angst, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmecathy/pseuds/callmecathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But then John. Filling the air with the lethal smell of gunpowder, electrifying it with sharp edges and close-calls, till everything Harold touched made him feel more <em>alive</em> than he ever had before-- hurting more, wanting more, being more.</p>
<p>(Or: It's not easy caring for one another, when they both walk the razor's edge.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are limited ways in which I can tell you "always"

**Author's Note:**

> Not specifically a prompt, but on the Kink-meme someone mentioned that there weren't enough codas to God Mode about Finch/Reese dealing with the emotional aftermath. Thought I'd help out.

"Jared Fowler," Harold says, taping the photo across the cracked glass, "forty eight, an insurance underwriter for Metlife." He pauses, offering John an opportunity to exercise his teasing lilt on a remark about Universal Heritage Insurances.

John is leaning against the wall in front of the window, his shadow casting across the floor. Sulky gray light creeps past him; it's a mulish beginning to summer: thunder clouds and the smell of rain. "Any threats?" John says, instead. "Any reason he might be the problem?"

"The former, perhaps. His girlfriend, Annie Daniels, was killed two months ago. Attributed to random gang violence."

John narrows his eyes. "I'd better make sure Fowler does revenge the right way."

"In the meantime, I'll see if I can dig up more about our gang."

Harold watches him walk out, shadows flickering and spinning as he moves past the windows. Harold isn't sure what he's waiting for. Certainly not a touch or a sentiment-- they are careful not to mix work with pleasure, and they are both particularly good (too good?) at compartmentalizing-- but something. Else.

There has been a distance between them since the nuclear facility and Root.

                                                                                                               ~*~*~

They're right about Fowler being the perpetrator. And wrong. Fowler walks into the gang's headquarters with a crude explosive, wounding all and killing none-- except for Fowler himself.

"Mr. Reese? John. John, are you there?"

Too long, traffic and shouting and screams.

"I'm here, Finch."

Harold sits back, feels the pound of his pulse; hates the panic surging beneath his skin. He listens to John's footsteps amidst honking and city noises for forty five minutes before John speaks.

"He had nothing left to live for." Saying one thing, meaning another. In fact he said it as if he were making a deal, in which case Harold _rejected that offer._

He draws breath to answer (he doesn't know what to say) but the line is already clicking off.

It's a hard case.

Hard cases usually mean a conscientious evening and, depending on who is cooking-- if it's John, something that actually requires a pan and a spatula, if it's Harold, a phone or a microwave-- a quiet dinner. They cling to those routines, using them as anchor points.

Tonight Harold watches John roam around the city as a small blip on the GPS, like one of the lights in the far-off windows.

He considers calling John. He might come back, and they might have takeout or soup or rib eye; Harold remembers one night in which he brings Chinese but forgets the utensils and they don't have any in the Library, so John grabs a pair of pencils and listens to him worry over the toxicity of them the entire meal. They could do that.

Except John will keep him at arm's length, and Harold will crave proximity (a feeling shining like gold under a layer of dust), and their quiet dinner will be a charade, charades being one thing he tries very hard not to allow stain their relationship.

Instead he watches the tracker as night closes around him.

                                                                                                               ~*~*~

"Detective," Harold says, touching his ear piece, "have you identified the man in the photo that we sent you?"

"Yeah, Harry Griffith, goes by--" Carter draws in a breath, a silent chuckle. "Scary Harry. If anyone's a threat to your girl, it's him."

"Thank you. I'll notify Mr. Reese immediately." He hesitates. The people he can go to for relationship advice is a short list-- Carter is on top of it, although previous data suggests that she isn't exactly successful in the area either.

"What's on your mind, Finch?" Carter asks, and her years as a cop have apparently taught her to hinge on the pause of _unsaid._

Footsteps echo faintly towards him, like ripples in a pond. "Never mind, Detective."

It is another night; it brings another number. The orange glow off the streetlights slants in from below, painting bruises across the wall.

Harold stands, shrugging into his coat as John drifts into the room.

"Going somewhere?" John asks. Half his face is black off the low light and deep shadows.

"I need to make a hardware run. I should be back in twenty minutes."

John had been taking off his coat. He pulls it back on.

"I'll take a map." Harold says, mild and teasing, until he realizes John isn't. Since the fallout from the virus John has hovered approximately two feet closer to Harold than before-- the distance, thankfully, is only figurative (although that leaves much to be desired).

Sirens linger on the air as they walk: sounds Harold used to dread, the meaning of them, but that has changed with their work. The air is warm and windy, heavy, damp drafts of it plowing into Harold, pressing him close to John. He lets it. Their shoulders brush, light but reassuring; their hands skim each other's, skin that, until a few months ago, had been very, very starved. John is timing his pace to Harold's. Occasionally Harold still marvels at the quality of this man, those long steps matching his lame ones.

He banters with the clerk over the merits of Linux, discusses Intel's 3.5GHZ Core and Asus's P9X79. He decides he likes this self-taught upstart. The bag rattles as he and John leave, bell trilling. There's an Indian restaurant nestled against the corner of the street.

Neither of them have eaten; the smells on the wind are almost unavoidable. They go in, making the decision on a shared glance and a raised eyebrow.

They don't tend to plan these things. Best not to when they're never sure whether there will be a "later".

The warmth and the heat from the _Kara Pori_ and _Bhindi Masala_ \-- they share, spearing bites off one another's plates-- have them shedding their coats on the backs of their chairs. It's dim and thick with incense and the thrum of sitars, glass chinkles lightly as bead curtains part and sway. The food is good and Harold is thinking he might like to come back, before his autocorrect kicks in: _predictability is vulnerability_. He has a great deal of difficulty breaking routines once they are started; better not to begin any more.

John is pushing open the door when a man blurs to the side of them, grabbing Harold's arm.

"Sir-- you're jacket," He says, holding it out.

Harold takes it as he flits back to the kitchen. When he turns he sees Reese frozen, shoved forward on the ends of his feet, radiating danger that sends heat streaks skidding into the air. In the dimness, it takes Harold a second to make out the shape of the gun.

Harold carefully nudges his arm-- he feels John's erratic pulse-- and lets the doors sway open. John slowly guides the gun back to his side.

                                                                                                                  ~*~*~

It's morning, no number, the air heavy and waiting, the clouds lurking the sky. Crime rates go down when people have to stay indoors. Harold decides to (stalk John) take a walk.

John weaves his way through the city, a mismatched network of streets and corners and crosswalks. He's following someone, Harold thinks, but he doesn't dare go close enough to John to see who.

It's awhile before Harold realizes they are heading towards a graveyard. He tells the cabbie to park far down the path and walks with his phone in his hand, keeping his eye on the pinprick dot. The grass creases underfoot; tree limbs dip towards the ground, trailing leaf-laden branches. He knows this place.

In fact he's been here before; if he closed his eyes, he could still find the stone inscribed _Nathan Ingram._ He remembers the first day he visited (the only day), every step weighted down, cataloguing his initial point and counting the paces, thirty eight to the left, then a hundred and forty six going straight.

Most of the dates on the grave stones have appreciable longevities-- years that space life and death not far from opposite ends of the century.

His phone starts beeping.

Harold looks around sharply, and there: lighting up the grim and the dead, that flash of red hair. He steps behind a tree trunk and watches her, bending down and placing flowers-- tulips, of course they're tulips, her favorite-- resting her hand on the top of the stone. Saying something, but he's too far away to hear; he's not altogether sure he's brave enough to want to.

He silences his phone as she walks away. He aches to say, _"I'm sorry"_. He thinks of Nathan's gravestone, now fifty steps to the left and two hundred and fifty eight backwards. He thinks of the remnants of his past, memories mixing regret and grief and joy, jagged pieces of a life that will never fit back together.

Harold divides things into befores and afters. Before John, only two unforeseen variables had altered his life's equation.

Nathan, colliding into him intense as the gold off liquor, burning in and through and out of his life with the same fierce scorch of it down the throat. Grace, falling out of the sky, splashing dramatic streaks of colors across his canvas in hues he hadn't known existed.

Until an explosion rewrote both, leaving the formula unrecognizable.

But then John, filling the air with the lethal smell of gunpowder, electrifying it with sharp edges and close-calls, till everything Harold touched made him feel more _alive_ than he ever had before-- hurting more, wanting more, being more.

And another schism had irrevocably split his life again, exhilarating and terrifying, because he finally realized that John Reese is not a variable, but a constant.

Harold pulls away from the tree and moves further up the slope. He finds John just past his own grave marker-- "Harold" conjoined with yet another fickle name--, hands plunged deep into his pockets.

"Why?" Harold asks.

"If I can't protect her, I can't protect you."

"John." He says, a simple syllable with too many edges: a protest and a plead, an admonishment, the startings of a promise that he can't keep.

John hears all of it. "I have my list." He says tightly, daring an argument, "You have yours."

He thinks of John's list (they share it, of course, but apparently not today): Carter, Fusco, Zoey, Leon, Shaw; and after Root has threatened her-- although really him by extension-- now Grace. Himself, somewhere: Harold assumes the list is arranged less in any deliberate order and more by who John will or will not go on without.

John stares at Harold's grave. "You don't get to just erase yourself off of it like you had your Machine do."

He shifts, turning towards Harold. John is looking for an answer that would undoubtedly be a lie. Harold cannot offer him four years. He can't even guarantee a tomorrow.

It was John who convinced him that caring was less of a vulnerable backdoor and more of an open one.

"I'm not going to be buried here," Harold says eventually, motioning towards the gravestone. "Too many people think... that I already am." He turns. Orange-pink streaks pulse behind the clouds, altering the gray. "I've been looking at a plot in Green-Wood. Nice grounds. Good view."

Harold catches John's hand and squeezes. "There's room for two."

After a moment, John squeezes back.

They turn and walk out of the cemetery.


End file.
